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on Labor Markets - Supply, Demand, and Wages |
| By: | Sydnee Caldwell; Emily Oehlsen |
| Abstract: | We use randomized pay experiments among Uber drivers, paired with a natural experiment in access to a competitor, to examine how outside options shape labor supply to the firm. When hours are flexible, the firm-specific labor supply elasticity combines a market-hours component and a firm-substitution component. Access to a single competing platform nearly doubles drivers’ firm-specific elasticity and cuts the implied monopsony markdown from 68% to about 50%. The same experiments identify sex differences: women are about twice as elastic to the market as men, yet no less elastic to their employer. |
| JEL: | J2 J20 J42 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35626 |
| By: | Kamble, Vikrant V.; Motghare, Swapnil |
| Abstract: | We estimate the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply for New York City taxicab drivers using a new instrument: the type of taximeter installed in the vehicle. The two meter systems in use display different default tip percentages, generating plausibly exogenous variation in tip income and hourly pay across shifts. Assignment to the "high-default" meter raises hourly wages by 0.5 percent, entirely through tips, and increases shift hours by 0.9 percent, implying an elasticity of 1.7. These findings align with the standard neoclassical prediction that workers supply more hours when temporary pay rises and shed light on labor-supply behavior in flexible, schedule-setting work environments more broadly. |
| Keywords: | labor supply, Frisch elasticity, intertemporal substitution, taxi drivers, tipping, instrumental variables |
| JEL: | J22 J31 D15 D91 C26 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1809 |
| By: | Daniel Goller; Samuel Lüthi; Stefan C. Wolter |
| Abstract: | Practical skills are widely believed to be a key determinant of labor market success, yet credible empirical evidence remains scarce, because these skills are occupation-specific, acquired primarily through workplace experience, and notoriously difficult to measure. We address these challenges using an exceptional dataset covering over 170 occupations. Our measure of practical skills is based on high-stakes expert evaluations of apprentices' performance in occupation-specific standardized practical examinations, conducted under authentic workplace conditions and lasting from several hours to several weeks. Combined with rich administrative data, this allows us to separate practical skills from general and vocational knowledge. We show that practical skills form a distinct dimension of human capital, only weakly correlated with traditional achievement measures. Practical skills are the strongest predictor of early labor market success, consistently associated with higher first-year earnings, lower NEET risk, greater retention by the training firm, and a higher likelihood of entering tertiary education. These relationships are robust across occupational task groups and by gender. Out-of-sample analyses show that practical skills substantially improve predictions beyond conventional educational achievement and background characteristics. |
| Keywords: | Return to skills, Practical skills, School-to-work transition, Human capital |
| JEL: | J24 I26 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26206 |
| By: | David Neumark; Emma Wohl |
| Abstract: | We provide the first direct estimates of the effects of minimum wages on low-wage workers in families at different points of the distribution of income-to-needs, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, which oversamples low-income families. We find adverse – rather than beneficial – effects of minimum wages on the employment, hours, and earnings of initially-employed low-wage workers in poor and low-income families. Although we do not find a gradient indicating more adverse effects on the poorest low-wage workers, the adverse effects for poor and low-income low-wage workers help explain why minimum wages do not reduce poverty. |
| JEL: | J23 J38 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35628 |
| By: | Giovanni Immordino; Mario Macis; Immacolata Marino; Fabrizio Panebianco |
| Abstract: | When a new technology promises large private benefits but may impose social costs that markets do not price, demand need not reveal how citizens want it governed. We examine this using a nationally representative U.S. survey experiment (N=5, 556) on human enhancement technologies (HET). The experiment randomizes benefit domain, mechanism, heritability, purpose, and risk across vignettes; for each respondent’s assigned vignette, we elicit stated adoption, preferred regulation, and ethical and societal concerns. Overall, about 53% would adopt. Framing the technology as enhancing rather than restorative lowers adoption by about five percentage points, as much as a severe side-effect profile. About 28% would not adopt at any benefit. This refusal is driven overwhelmingly by the enhancing framing rather than by risk, consistent with a non-compensatory constraint for a substantial subgroup. Most who would adopt still favor strict regulation, and most who would never adopt do not wish to forbid others from doing so. Productivity enhancement generates the most ethical concern of any attribute but attracts the least regulation, and respondents favor subsidizing rather than taxing its adoption, consistent with a concern about access rather than safety. Private demand is therefore an unreliable guide to the governance citizens want, and the divergence we document provides a basis for regulators seeking to align the direction of technical change with societal values and priorities. |
| JEL: | D63 D81 I18 J24 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35495 |
| By: | Tom Coupé (University of Canterbury) |
| Abstract: | Fears that automation destroys more jobs than it creates have resurfaced with artificial intelligence. Using five Eurobarometer waves (1989–2024) covering 12 European countries, I examine the long-run evolution of perceptions of technological unemployment. Contemporary pessimism is not historically unusual, it was substantially higher in 1989, and especially 1992, than in 2024. Social divides have also changed. Pronounced educational and occupational differences in 1989 had largely disappeared by 2024. An Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition shows that changing population composition explains little of the decline. These findings show that both the level and the socioeconomic and national patterning of concerns about technological unemployment have changed substantially over time. |
| Keywords: | Artificial Intelligence, Attitudes, Employment |
| JEL: | J24 O33 J23 |
| Date: | 2026–08–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbt:econwp:26/07 |
| By: | René Karadakic; David C. Chan; Nancy L. Keating; Bruce E. Landon; Michael L. Barnett |
| Abstract: | We estimate the returns to specialization in medical oncology, in which subspecialists focus on specific cancer types. Using 2.2 million Medicare chemotherapy episodes from 2008–2020, we instrument for subspecialist access with differential distance to cancer-type-specific subspecialists versus general oncologists. Access to a relevant subspecialist reduces three-year mortality by 4.5 percentage points (10 percent), without increasing Medicare spending or measured provider fragmentation. Subspecialists also increase the use of newer therapies and diagnosis-specific clinical trials. These findings show that specialization raises productivity when expertise is closely matched to the task. |
| Keywords: | physician specialization, mortality, health care access |
| JEL: | I1 J24 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12937 |
| By: | Andy Chung (University of Reading, Global Labor Organization); Tin Cheuk Leung (Wake Forest University); James Reade (University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | Digital platforms expose workers and managers to immediate, public, and persistent evaluations from external audiences, creating a form of social pressure that may shape workplace decisions. We examine whether such digital social pressure predicts subsequent opportunity allocation and worker performance, using professional football as a high-frequency empirical setting. We link player-match data from Europe’s five major leagues to post-match Twitter commentary and construct measures of negative sentiment, toxicity, and racial abuse. Comparing players with themselves over time and teammates in the same current match, we find that greater negative sentiment is associated with a lower probability of appearing in the team’s next match. Toxicity shows a similar but less stable association, while racial-abuse intensity is imprecisely estimated when the measures enter jointly. By contrast, associations with performance conditional on a subsequent appearance are small and imprecise. Overall, the findings suggest that digital social pressure is reflected more strongly in the allocation of subsequent opportunities than in worker performance, showing how public evaluations generated outside formal organizational boundaries can become part of the reputational environment surrounding internal managerial decisions. |
| Keywords: | digital social pressure; online criticism; managerial decision-making; worker performance; social media; professional football; racial abuse |
| JEL: | J24 M54 D91 Z22 J71 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:wfuewp:023574 |
| By: | Joern Kleinert (University of Graz, Austria) |
| Abstract: | A match in the labor market results from a two-sided discrete choice of workers and firms. On the one side, heterogeneous workers choose to apply to firms' offers which correspond well to their abilities, education, training (all closely related to job seeker's occupation), interests, and job expectations. On the other side, heterogeneous firms choose from applications received their employees depending on their occupation or work experience, special skills, and expected fit into the existing team. Each side makes discrete choices. In this way, I model labor market search and matching with mismatches as one possible result. Labor market outcomes are thereby strongly affected by non-labor market influences, such as education decisions and sector shifts in the goods market. |
| Keywords: | Labor market matching, Wages, Occupational differentiation |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J64 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2026-16 |
| By: | Paul Gompers; George Hu; Will Levinson; Sachin Srivastava |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how networks formed through college athletics influence the early-career trajectories of Ivy League graduates. Tracking professional histories of 120, 306 Ivy League graduates, we compare each graduate's actual first job against other potential jobs that the graduate could reasonably have taken. Athletics-based networks, especially team-based connections, materially influence initial job choice. Employing one additional alum from a specific Ivy League collegiate sports team increases the probability that a same-team athlete joins the firm by 193.70% relative to the baseline match probability. Likewise, employing one more Ivy League alum who played a specific Varsity sport increases the probability that any Ivy League athlete who plays the same sport joins the firm by 16.40%, while employing one more alum who played any sport at a specific Ivy League university raises the probability that any Ivy League athlete from the same university joins the firm by 4.60%. For team-based connections, these effects persist whether the alum and the college athlete were direct peers whose college years overlapped or older “network” affiliates whose college years were completely disjoint. Our results demonstrate that college athletics-based social networks materially influence initial job placement and early-career trajectories for top college graduates. More generally, they clarify how non-academic social capital shapes the job searching and matching process within labor markets. |
| JEL: | I23 J24 J38 J4 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35527 |
| By: | Chengyuan Hua (West Virginia University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how managers matter for worker productivity by exploiting manager moves in Major League Baseball. I first show that manager effects are primarily match-specific using an AKM-type model. Then, staggered difference-in-differences results show positive effects of shared characteristics, including same position, both lefties, and same hometown. Effects of same position and both lefties are larger than same hometown. Effects are more pronounced for younger and less productive workers, indicating that mentoring is the primary mechanism while in-group bias is secondary. Finally, there is suggestive evidence that a manager’s productivity as a worker is not a positive characteristic. |
| Keywords: | Manager, productivity, matching, mentoring |
| JEL: | M54 J24 Z22 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wvu:wpaper:26-08 |
| By: | HOSONO, Kaoru; YAMAMOTO, Yohei |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how intangible capital is related to firms' market power in product and labor markets using an unbalanced panel of Japanese listed firms from 1980 to 2024. We estimate firm-level markups and markdowns following the production-function approaches employed by the standard literature and then relate these measures to two types of intangible capital: R&D stock and organizational capital. The empirical results show that organizational capital is positively associated with markups and negatively associated with markdowns, while the role of R&D stock is relatively limited and less robust. These findings suggest that organizational capital may strengthen firms' product-market position while also encouraging rent sharing with workers. The stagnant accumulation of organizational capital may therefore help explain why Japan experienced weak price and wage growth since the 2000s. |
| Keywords: | Intangible capital, markups, markdowns, organizational capital, labor market power, Japan |
| JEL: | E22 L11 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hiasdp:hias-e-162 |
| By: | Mayara Felix; Michael B. Wong |
| Abstract: | Evidence that domestic outsourcing lowers pay comes largely from on-site transfers, in which workers move to a contractor but keep the same jobs. Displacement is rarely observed: whether workers lose their jobs, where they go, how earnings evolve. In Brazil’s 1993–1994 pro-outsourcing reforms, which differentially affected security guards, such transfers were rare; firms instead used occupational layoffs, shedding their guards while keeping other workers. Displaced guards’ employment recovered within five years, but many changed occupations and wages stayed about 12% lower. Lifetime losses average 1.2 to 1.5 years of pre-layoff earnings, concentrated among workers from high-wage firms, reflecting lost premia. |
| JEL: | J31 J63 L24 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35584 |
| By: | Berniell, Inés; Gasparini, Leonardo; Marchionni, Mariana; Ramírez-Leira, Lucía |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the dynamics of vulnerable non-poor households in Latin America, focusing on how they compare with the poor and how both groups respond to macroeconomic fluctuations. Using harmonized household survey microdata from 15 countries over more than three decades (1992-2024), complemented with longitudinal data for four of the regions largest economies, we examine how the size of socioeconomic groups evolves with long-run economic growth and cyclical fluctuations and whether labor market responses to macroeconomic conditions differ systematically between poor and vulnerable individuals. We find that the share of vulnerable non-poor individuals has risen modestly, reflecting higher inflows from poverty than outflows to richer groups. While labor market outcomes are strongly procyclical for both poor and vulnerable individuals, a striking pattern emerges across countries: In less developed economies, vulnerable individuals experience significantly stronger cyclical changes in labor market outcomes than the poor, whereas the opposite pattern arises in more developed economies, particularly along employment margins. Exploiting longitudinal data, we further show that transitions into and out of vulnerability are driven primarily by changes in labor income, especially through employment and hourly earnings adjustments. Overall, the results highlight that the relationship between vulnerability and macroeconomic fluctuations depends critically on labor market structure, which shapes the adjustment margins available to different groups of workers. |
| Keywords: | Employment |
| JEL: | I32 J21 J46 E32 O54 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14708 |
| By: | Burkhard Heer; Mark Trede |
| Abstract: | We develop a medium-scale overlapping-generations model with endogenous labour supply and skill premium to study optimal income redistribution using progressive labour income taxes and pensions. The model is calibrated to the four countries USA, Great Britain, Italy and Germany which differ substantially in their tax and pension systems, demographics, and skill shares among workers. Optimal pension benefits are proportional to lifetime contributions in all four countries, while the optimal degree of income progressivity varies systematically with country characteristics such as the size of the social security system, demographics or the skill share in the labour force. Optimal income taxes should be more progressive in the United States and Great Britain and much less progressive in the continental countries, Italy and Germany. Population ageing further reduces the optimal extent of income redistribution. |
| Keywords: | inequality, income distribution, skill premium, overlapping generations, social security, progressive taxation, pension schedule |
| JEL: | C68 D31 H21 H24 H55 J11 J26 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12938 |
| By: | Grigoriadis, Theocharis; Veselov, Dmitriy |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a political-economy game of skilled exit, redistribution, repression, and regime survival. Skilled workers are economically valuable because they become entrepreneurs, pay taxes, and generate productive externalities for low-skilled workers. They are also politically dangerous because they can enter political competition in democracy, participate in revolution- ary collective action in autocracy, or leave the country altogether. Governments therefore face a strategic tradeoff. Retaining skilled citizens raises output and fiscal capacity, but it can also increase electoral or revolutionary pressure. Allowing skilled citizens to leave weakens development, but it may relax the incumbent's political constraint. In democracy, redistribution toward the low-skilled majority lowers the return to skilled entrepreneurship and can induce exit. In autocracy, exit barriers and repression are alternative technologies of political survival: hard dictatorships can restrict exit and extract from skilled workers, while soft dictatorships may tolerate emigration because it reduces the pool of potential protesters. We characterize this logic in a one-shot benchmark and a dynamic extension with persistent brain drain and absorbing political turnover. We also allow repression costs to rise with the human-capital intensity of the economy, so that repression becomes more destructive precisely when skilled labor is more productive. The model yields a comparative regime logic of skilled exit: emigration is highest where exit directly relaxes the incumbent's political constraint, as in soft dictatorship, or where redistribution lowers the domestic return to skilled entrepreneurship, as in redistributive democracy; it is lower in elitist democracy and lowest in hard dictatorship. |
| Keywords: | brain drain, migration, democracy, dictatorship, redistribution, repression, political competition, revolution, institutions |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D78 F22 J24 O15 P16 P26 P48 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:342530 |
| By: | Zixi Lei; Xiaomeng Chen; Wen Wen; Andrew Whinston |
| Abstract: | Remote work is a common practice of workplace flexibility enabled by digital infrastructure, yet its implications for firms' talent composition and organizational structure remain underexplored. This question is especially important for startups, which often operate with constraints in accessing talent through local labor markets. We focus on skill complementarity, a dimension of talent composition that is critical to startups' early-stage development. By integrating LinkedIn job postings, worker skills, and worker mobility data, we study the impact of remote work on skill complementarity in startups. We find that higher remote work intensity increases firm-level skill complementarity, primarily by helping startups recruit new workers whose skills better match the firms' hiring needs and diversify from the skill sets of existing employees. We further show that this shift in workforce composition carries organizational consequences: remote work is associated with greater organizational hierarchy through increased skill complementarity. These findings suggest that, for startups, remote work is not merely a flexibility policy but a hiring mechanism that helps young firms assemble complementary talent despite resource constraints. At the same time, this may push startups toward more hierarchical structures, which serve as formalized coordination mechanisms to effectively achieve the value of a more complementary workforce. |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2608.02666 |
| By: | Hoffmann, Linda; Wicht, Alexandra |
| Abstract: | Vocational education and training (VET) dropout disrupts school-to-work transitions. While spatial mobility is an important strategy for accessing VET, little is known about how it relates to subsequent dropout. Drawing on a cost-benefit perspective, this study examines whether first-year VET dropout differs by spatial mobility and whether these differences vary with resources available to bear mobility-related costs and returns that may offset them. We use representative longitudinal data from the German National Educational Panel Study linked to administrative geospatial data. Logistic regression models distinguish non-mobile students from those mobile within and between regional labor markets (RLMs) and assess heterogeneity by parental socioeconomic status (SES), VET wages, realized occupational aspirations, regional attractiveness, and regional person-environment match. Predicted dropout probabilities are approximately three percentage points higher for mobility within RLMs and four points higher for mobility between RLMs than for no mobility. These mobility-related differences decrease with increasing parental SES for both mobility types. Higher VET wages correspond to smaller dropout differences for mobility within RLMs, whereas greater realization of occupational aspirations corresponds to smaller differences for mobility between RLMs. Higher regional attractiveness shows a similar pattern only for mobility within RLMs, while higher regional person-environment match coincides with smaller dropout differences for both mobility types. Overall, mobility-related dropout differences vary with available resources and realized returns. The social patterning of mobility-related dropout differences may contribute to inequalities in school-to-work transitions, underscoring the importance of considering spatial mobility and regional contexts in research on youths’ educational decision-making. |
| Date: | 2026–08–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:kbcq6_v1 |
| By: | Carlos Fernando Avenancio-León; Adelina Barbalau; Cyndi Hou; Alessio Piccolo |
| Abstract: | We study how dominant employers can act as *electoral monopsonies*, using local labor market power to shape political preferences and electoral outcomes. We first present original survey evidence showing that workers at major local employers are more likely to experience employer political communication and to report that their employers influence their voting behavior and career expectations. We then develop a model in which a dominant employer can affect voters’ preferences by shaping their expectations about how wages and employment depend on electoral outcomes. We distinguish a passive channel, through which workers internalize firms’ economic interests, from an active channel, through which dominant employers strategically influence these expectations. Under the active channel, labor market power translates into political power and can generate political failures by inducing voters to oppose policies they would otherwise support. The model also shows how electoral monopsonies can contribute to political polarization, constrain political platforms, and substitute for campaign spending. Using U.S. individual-level voting data and a shift-share design based on national industry concentration shocks and predetermined local employment shares, we show that greater electoral monopsony power increases Republican voter turnout. Counterfactual estimates imply that reducing electoral monopsony power could have narrowly changed the outcomes of the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections. |
| JEL: | D72 J42 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35676 |
| By: | Vahid Moghani (Erasmus University Rotterdam) |
| Abstract: | Mover-design event studies are a leading approach to separating place effects from sorting. The coefficient is often interpreted as the share of cross-sectional variation in location means due to places. I show the coefficient depends on how movers connect locations: two economies can be identical in place effects, sorting, and location means, yet deliver different mover coefficients. Only under directional isotropy, a testable condition, does the coefficient permit a cross-sectional reading: it averages the variance share of place effects and the share that equalizing them removes. An illustration in Dutch employer–employee wage data rejects the condition. |
| Keywords: | mover design, place effects, two-way fixed effects |
| JEL: | C23 C52 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–08–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260056 |
| By: | Karlsson, Jimmy (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | Carbon taxation is one of the main policy instruments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet there is still limited evidence on its effects on firms and workers. This paper studies the environmental and economic effects of carbon taxation, with a particular focus on heterogeneity in labor demand across worker groups. I exploit a reform that increased the effective carbon tax for a subset of Swedish manufacturing firms between 2011 and 2018, and combine administrative firm data with matched employer-employee records in a difference-in-differences design. The reform reduced emissions by about 30%, primarily through substitution away from fossil fuels toward biofuels and district heating. It also reduced revenue and employment, with the strongest negative effects concentrated among emission-intensive firms. The employment effects are driven mainly by older workers without a high school degree, although older, highly educated workers are also negatively affected in the most exposed firms. Additional evidence suggests that firms adjusted labor demand primarily through lower hiring rather than higher separations. Scaled by the average increase in effective tax rates (measured in euro per ton CO2), the estimates imply semi-elasticities of -0.58% for emissions and -0.20% for employment among low-educated workers. These results suggest that carbon taxation can substantially reduce industrial emissions, but with concentrated labor-market costs. |
| Keywords: | Carbon taxation; Climate change; Firm performance; Inequality; Employment |
| JEL: | H23 J23 L60 Q52 Q58 |
| Date: | 2026–08–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1564 |
| By: | Jonathan Hall; Jason Hicks; Morris M. Kleiner; Yun taek Oh |
| Abstract: | We examine whether occupational licensing improves service quality and safety using trip-level Uber data that include driver ratings and telematics-based measures of driving behavior. Exploiting quasi-random assignment from proximity-based dispatch, we compare trips served by licensed and unlicensed drivers in two settings: a cross-border comparison between New York City and New Jersey, and a deregulation event in Houston. Across settings and specifications, including instrumental variable estimates, we find no consistent evidence that licensing improves consumer outcomes. In Houston, post-deregulation entrants are indistinguishable from previously licensed drivers on ratings and driving behavior, despite differing markedly in experience and age. |
| JEL: | J0 J44 J48 J89 K29 L10 L8 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35635 |
| By: | Gay, Victor; Milner, Benjamin |
| Abstract: | Combining district-level measures of World War I military fatalities with full-count census microdata, we show that wartime mortality increased postwar female labor force participation in England and Wales. Women shifted away from traditionally female occupations, while military deaths increased the shares of single and widowed women, whose participation rates were higher. Yet the overall effect of military mor-tality on postwar female labor force participation remained modest. A harmonized comparison with France suggests that stronger internal migration in England and Wales rapidly dissipated local marriage- and labor-market imbalances, while more generous pensions for war widows weakened their labor supply response. |
| Keywords: | World War I; Female labor force participation; England and Wales |
| JEL: | J16 J21 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132063 |
| By: | Buser, Thomas (Amsterdam School of Economics, University of Amsterdam); Cappelen, Alexander W. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); Gneezy, Uri (Rady School of Management); Tungodden, Bertil (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | We provide globally representative evidence on two attitudes toward competition: individuals’ willingness to compete and the importance they attach to boys and girls being willing to compete, using a novel survey module that we fielded as part of the 2022 Gallup World Poll. The data cover more than 66, 000 individuals across 62 countries. Men are more willing to compete than women in all but two countries, and willingness to compete is higher among younger, more educated, and higher-income individuals. Attitudes toward children’s willingness to compete vary substantially across countries, with competitiveness valued more for boys in some countries and for girls in others. Both attitudes are systematically related to the economic and social environment. Individuals exposed to greater inequality or faster population growth during their formative years are more willing to compete and place greater importance on children being willing to compete. Greater exposure to gender equality during formative years is associated with smaller gender gaps in both adults’ willingness to compete and attitudes toward the competitiveness of boys and girls. Our findings reveal striking global regularities while highlighting the role of the social environment in shaping attitudes toward competition. |
| Keywords: | willingness to compete; gender; global; representative sample; socialization |
| JEL: | D91 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–08–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2026_011 |
| By: | Cesar Velazquez (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico); Isidro Soloaga (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico); Monserrat Zuñiga Loreto (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between neighborhood crime and firm employment in Mexico City. Using a balanced panel of 2, 354 Basic Geostatistical Areas (AGEBs) for 2017--2022, we estimate Spatial Durbin Models with AGEB fixed effects, lagged and winsorized crime variables, and differential trends by dominant firm-size stratum, decomposing total effects into direct and indirect components. At the aggregate level, robberies are negatively associated with employment in the AGEBs where they occur, alongside positive spillovers toward neighboring areas. This aggregate pattern conceals substantial heterogeneity: large firms (101 or more employees) are the only stratum with a negative and significant direct effect, whereas small firms (0--10 employees) show a positive direct effect, consistent with structural immobility and the local reallocation of displaced demand. Medium-sized firms show negative but imprecisely estimated effects. A dynamic specification preserves these signs but is weakly identified once persistence is absorbed. Crime appears to reallocate employment across the firm-size distribution and across space rather than uniformly contracting local labor demand. |
| JEL: | C33 J23 K42 R12 |
| Date: | 2026–09–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smx:wpaper:2026012 |
| By: | Michael Baker; Jonathan Gruber; Kevin S. Milligan |
| Abstract: | We provide new estimates of the effects of universal child care on the long-term labor outcomes of mothers, documenting the life-cycle impact of Quebec’s universal, subsidized child care program on maternal labor supply, earnings, social program benefit receipt and tax remittances. We find an enduring positive impact on mothers’ employment long after children have aged out of the preschool years. There is also a long-run impact on earnings which grows to be twice as large as the participation effect. This arises because of growth in the intensity of labor force participation and a rise in hourly wages over time, suggesting that initial investments in work have multiplier effects later in women’s careers. There is clear evidence of occupational upgrading but most of the growth is within occupation, including the impact of more labor market experience in the years after children are out of child care. We show that, as a result, tax remittances grow over the lifecycle, and social assistance and employment insurance receipts fall. Our estimate of the fiscal balance of these effects reveals that the net present value of the flow of fiscal benefits may recapture between 75 and 117 percent of the upfront costs of the program. |
| JEL: | H31 J13 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35514 |
| By: | Serena Goldberg; Costas Meghir |
| Abstract: | Childcare services can offer an opportunity for women to develop their careers and increase household income. At the same time, it can affect the development of children, depending on the quality of care. We first develop a collective model of the household as a conceptual framework to show how improving the availability of childcare can affect mothers’ labor market opportunities and earnings and how it can affect child development. We then review the literature on the effects of childcare on the employment and earnings of women and on child development. Childcare can increase mothers’ employment. However, limited work opportunities or strict norms against maternal work can keep mothers out of the labor force. When other family members provide care, childcare can free these caregivers to work or attend school. When studies measure the impact on child development, the results are mixed and depend on both context and quality of provision. |
| JEL: | D13 I28 J13 J16 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35649 |
| By: | Brent R. Hickman; John A. List; Ian Muir; Gregory K. Sun |
| Abstract: | We study identification and optimal policy design in a broad class of principal-agent models. We show that the most common empirical framework within the literature is equivalent to an unstructured potential-outcomes model augmented with three specific assumptions: the Law of Demand (LoD), or treatment-effect monotonicity; extrapolative model structure (EMS), which rules out lumpy agent responses to price changes; and rank invariance (RI), which restricts unobserved heterogeneity (UH) to be one-dimensional. This decomposition isolates the identifying content of each assumption and clarifies its economic role. The LoD and MS are empirically testable using exogenous price variation; RI, on the other hand, is a strong assumption ruling out many economically plausible behaviors, and also not empirically testable. We derive sharp bounds on counterfactual outcomes when RI is relaxed. The conventional 1-dimensional model delivers an upper bound on planner objectives, while the lower bound, which allows for arbitrary multi-dimensional UH, has an adversarial interpretation for policy design. We estimate empirical bounds and apply them to nonlinear pricing of rideshare services. The resulting robust pricing policy fully insures against worst-case latent selection while preserving most of the profit and consumer-surplus gains predicted by the conventional model. Our framework provides a tractable approach to robust policy design in adverse-selection settings including Mirrleesian taxation, regulation, labor supply, and procurement. |
| JEL: | B4 C14 C51 C52 C93 D04 J2 L1 L5 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35547 |
| By: | Bergmann, Lea |
| Abstract: | Shorter working hours reflect a fundamental tension in modern labor mar- kets: They may increase the labor force participation of women and improve work-life balance, but may impose organizational costs on firms through co- ordination frictions and reduced scheduling flexibility. I examine a 2001 Ger- man reform that granted employees in firms with 16 or more employees the legal right to reduce working hours permanently. Using firm-level administra- tive data and a difference-in-discontinuities design around the 16-employee threshold, I find no evidence that the mandate alters firms' employee struc- ture. Moreover, it does not affect firms' business volume or hiring behavior. These null effects can be explained by firms already accommodating part-time requests before the reform. Overall, the results indicate that the mandate did not generate detectable distortions in employment or firm performance. |
| Abstract: | Teilzeitarbeit ist ein Spannungsfeld auf modernen Arbeitsmärkten: Sie kann die Erwerbsbeteiligung von Frauen erhöhen und die Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Privatleben verbessern, jedoch potenziell organisatorische Kosten für Unternehmen verursachen, aufgrund von Koordinationsproblemen und weniger Flexibilität bei der Arbeitsplanung. Diese Studie untersucht eine deutsche Reform aus dem Jahr 2001, die Beschäftigten in Unternehmen mit 16 oder mehr Mitarbeitern das Recht einräumte, ihre Arbeitszeit dauerhaft zu verkürzen. Anhand von administrativen Daten auf Unternehmensebene und eines Difference-in-Discontinuities-Designs rund um die Schwelle von 16 Beschäftigten finden sich keine Hinweise darauf, dass die Vorschrift die Beschäftigungsstruktur der Unternehmen verändert. Darüber hinaus hat sie keinen Einfluss auf das Geschäftsvolumen oder die Neueinstellungen von Unternehmen. Diese Nulleffekte lassen sich dadurch erklären, dass die Unternehmen bereits vor der Reform Teilzeitwünsche gestattet haben. Insgesamt deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass ein Recht auf Teilzeitarbeit keine nachweisbaren Veränderungen bei der Beschäftigung oder dem Geschäftserfolg verursacht hat. |
| Keywords: | part-time, firms, labor regulation |
| JEL: | J16 J18 J22 J63 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:343040 |
| By: | Gert Bijnens; John Hutchinson; Arthur Saint-Guilhem |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of cryptocurrency regulation on price deviations in the Bitcoin market, focusing on regulatory implementations rather than announcements. I construct a unique database of regulations across 28 countries since 2009, categorized into seven types, and analyse Bitcoin price data since September 2013. Our findings indicate that the Law of One Price does not hold in the Bitcoin market. Contrary to initial conjectures, more regulated markets exhibit higher price convergence with the USD benchmark. According to the type of regulation, this result is mixed. Regulations enhancing reliability and transparency, such as the expansion of securities laws, banking and payment regulations, and the implementation of regulatory sandboxes foster price convergence. In contrast, partial bans—primarily targeting banks—exacerbate price divergence, underscoring the significant role of financial institutions in the Bitcoin market. Additionally, anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) laws reduce local prices regardless of USD price level, suggesting the cryptoasset's use in illicit activities.. |
| Keywords: | Labour Hoarding, Monetary Policy Transmission, Firm-Level Heterogeneity, Employment Adjustment, Financial Constraints |
| JEL: | E52 J23 E32 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:1053 |
| By: | Yvonne Krabbe-Alkemade; France Portrait; Maarten Lindeboom; Marjolein Broese van Groenou; Hendrika J Luijen; Dorly Deegdijk |
| Abstract: | This study examines the causal effect of labor market restrictions faced by women in early adulthood on later-life cognitive functioning. To identify this effect, we exploit an exogenous policy change in the Netherlands that removed restrictions on married women's access to paid employment in 1957. Our study draws on data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, an ongoing cohort study of older individuals. We focus on individuals aged 75 and older born between 1928 and 1947. We first examine how work restrictions in early adulthood shape lifetime employment. Next, we assess how these work restrictions affect women’s later-life cognitive outcomes exploiting an exogenous change in labor restriction laws and complement this with an instrumental variables approach. The estimation results indicate that restricted access to paid employment for women in early adulthood reduced labor force participation and occupational prestige over the life course. These reduced labor market opportunities, in turn, led to poorer cognitive functioning after age 75. We also find some suggestive evidence that these restrictions resulted in faster cognitive decline. Taken together, our findings indicate that restrictions on women’s access to paid employment adversely affect cognitive functioning, thereby contributing to cognitive disparities between men and women in later life. More broadly, they highlight the long-term cognitive benefits of sustained labor market engagement and cognitively stimulating work, with potential implications for dementia prevention. |
| Keywords: | Cognitive functioning at older age, dementia, access to paid employment, gender disparities |
| JEL: | J16 J19 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–09–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mhe:chemon:paper_1788391888415_642 |